Congratulations to PNI's Director Mala Murthy, who was awarded a 2024 Pilot Award from the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) for her project "Linking ASD risk genes to sensorimotor circuits for dynamic social communication." The supported project leverages the fruit fly model system to investigate how autism risk genes affect neural circuits that underlie social communication behaviors. By combining advanced behavioral analysis, brain-wide imaging techniques, and the newly available Drosophila connectome, Murthy's team aims to uncover how genetic mutations associated with autism spectrum disorder disrupt sensorimotor processing in hopes of generating new insights into the neural basis of social communication deficits.